Protect Your Email Address Online
Published:
2nd November
2006 |
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 Many
spammers operate "bots": autonomous software robots that
"crawl" the Web looking for email addresses. If you post
your email address publicly anywhere online (on a
website, a discussion forum, on USENET, in a guestbook
etc.) then sooner or later it will be found by one of
these bots and will then get added to a spam mailing
list. These harvested email addresses are commonly
bundled by the millions onto CDs, which spammers then
use to send out their unwanted messages. |
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ADVICE: |
- Don't post your
email address in "plain" form anywhere on the Web.
Instead, you can disguise your email address by
writing it in a convoluted way so that humans can
still read it, but bots can't. For example, instead
of writing "john@example.com", use "john AT example
DOT com".
- Keep a "private"
email address which you share only with close
friends and family. Never use this private email
address on any site. Jmail by
Spamjadoo.com is recommend and provides you
privacy.
- Obfuscate your email
address before posting it on your website by using
the email address encoding tool.
- Use a feedback form
on your website instead of providing a contact email
address.
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Choose a Non-Obvious
Email Address |
Some spammers find email
addresses by generating likely combinations using
automated tools. For example, they may generate a list
like aaaaa@hotmail.com, aaaab@hotmail.com, aaaac@hotmail.com
and so on. They also make use of word lists and lists of
first names and surnames to generate likely email
addresses.
Of course, most of the email addresses generated
automatically using these techniques won't actually
exist, but spammers don't care since email is so cheap
to send out. |
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ADVICE: |
- Choose
a relatively long email address (8+ characters)
- Never
sign up for an email address which is the same as
your first name or last name (e.g. ajay@hotmail.com).
Instead, add your initials and some numbers (e.g.
ajay77@hotmail.com)
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